


Tylwyth Teg

by WhyWhyNot



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Panacea, Child Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 21
Words: 4,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25970482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyWhyNot/pseuds/WhyWhyNot
Summary: An unknown Cape is killing children, and Chloe Solomon intends to stop them.
Comments: 76
Kudos: 34





	1. Mia Campbell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gerbilfriend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerbilfriend/gifts).



Mia doesn’t like it here.

Her head hurts. Lots. And it’s all dark. Mia doesn’t like it when it’s all dark. There could be monsters under the bed, like Crawler.

(Mia isn’t sure what Crawler looks like. But she heard the man on the teevee talking about him when she went to pee in the night, and Mommy said he was a monster, and his name is _Crawler_ , so he must be just the right side to be under the her bed, even if Keith says it’s stupid.)

(Mia doesn’t like Keith anyway. _He_ ’s stupid, not her.)

Mia doesn’t like it here. She wants to be in her bed, with her blanket and Puffball and the little light so monsters can’t get under her bed, and so she doesn’t hurt her toes when she goes to pee. It’s all dark here. Mia can’t see at all, and she doesn’t have her blanket, and she doesn’t have Puffball, so she’s all alone. 

Mia _doesn’t like it_ when she’s alone.

Mia wants to raise her arms, but it doesn’t work, and her eyes itch, but she can’t blink even if she tries real hard.

Mia’s head hurts _lots_. 

(Where is Mommy? She wants Mommy! She wants mommy, and Puffball, and to be not here!)

Mia isn’t supposed to make too much noise. It makes Keith angry. But Keith is stupid, and Mia is all alone, and _she wants Mommy!_

Mia can’t scream.


	2. Hamelin 1.1

At first, the PRT doesn’t get involved in the case. 

At first, there isn’t even a case. There are cases. Several, unrelated, cases of children going missing. Terrible, tragic, but not the PRT juridiction, and with the ABB and the Empire fighting, nobody had the time to think twice about it. 

Nobody has the time to think about it at all. Not with Brockton Bay quickly going from powderkeg to war zone.

The first corpse isn’t found before the end of the first week. By then, four children have gone missing.

A lot of people are found dead these days, and it looks like little Maisy Chambers died of natural causes.

Nobody has the time to think twice about it. Nobody has the time to think about it at all.

It takes until the end of the second week for someone to connect the disparitions, the _deaths_ , with each other. To realize something is _wrong_ with them. Two weeks, before the whispers of _Cape_ start spreading amongst the ones working on the disparitions.

A few more days before Chloe Solomon gets assigned to the Tylwyth Teg case.

By then, the pattern is clear enough for her to know she has less than two days to save Courtney Bryant.

She doesn’t succeed.


	3. Hamelin 1.2

Victoria Morgan deserved better than that.

(So did Courtney Bryant. So did Leah Russell, and Maisy Chambers, and all the little girls Tylwyth Teg killed.)

Victoria Morgan deserved better, but she’s still dead, and now, all Chloe can do is _use_ that.

(It feels dirty. Disgusting. Disrespectful. But the most disrespectful thing to do would be to let her death be in vain. Chloe owes it to the dead to try and save the living.)

Victoria Morgan died the way all the other did. Dehydration.

(Not the _quick_ kind of dehydration. Not the strange, supernatural kind, where all the water is drained from your body in a matter of seconds. The slow kind. The agonizing kind. The kind that only reveals the cape through the autopsy.)

Victoria Morgan died of thirst with a stomach full of water.


	4. Hamelin 1.3

Chloe doesn’t have any particularly strong feelings toward Armsmaster.

She’s glad he’s on their side, of course, glad he’s working with the PRT rather than against. He’s a very good Tinker, after all, from what she understands of Tinkers. Powerful, and creative, and in Brockton Bay, that’s something they _need_.

(They're outnumbered, and outgunned, and no matter how many times the Director asks, reinforcements never come. They need every advantage they can get.)

Chloe is glad Armsmaster is on their side, on _her_ side, the way she’s glad for good gear and well-working weapons. She’s glad for the _resource_ he is, for all the ways he’s useful.

But Armsmaster as a man, Armsmaster as a _person_ with dreams and feelings and hopes and fears?

She doesn’t know anything about him. She doesn’t _care_. Never had a reason to.

She guesses there’s a start for everything.

Armsmaster got hurt. Chloe doesn’t have the exact details, but she thinks it involved Lung and Hookwolf. Whatever happened, he’s going to be out of the field for a while.

And they're going to work on the Tylwyth Teg case together.


	5. Hamelin 1.4

After several days of working together, all Chloe has learned about her temporary partner is that Armsmaster is terrifyingly driven, somehow even more overworked than she is, and somewhat averse to pleasantries and small talk.

Chloe can live with that. Small talk feels dirty when children are dying.

Chloe has traded her office at the PRT headquarters for a room on the Rig. Armsmaster has traded his armor for crutches and his visor for a mask covering the upper half of his face and an array of screens and monitors.

They traded a dead child for another.

They’ve shared the work. Chloe on everything that involves leaving the Rig, since Armsmaster’s broken leg keeps him out of the field, and him on more technical work, like checking databases and video surveillance.

“It’s a Master,” says a voice in her ear.

“What?”

“I’ve managed to get security footage of the moments Leah Russell, Daniela Morrow and Samantha Porter went missing,” says Armsmaster’s voice in her com. “They appear to have left by themselves. It looks like the work of a human Master, or possibly a Stranger who wouldn’t show on camera. However, as the children don’t appear to interact with anyone, I believe a Master is more likely.”

A Master or a Stranger.

“Shaun Nichols,” says Chloe, and Armsmaster stays quiet for a few seconds.

“Isobel Robertson’s babysitter? What about him?”

“He was the last person to see her before she went missing. Said she was ‘acting weird’. He chalked it up on her being scared because shots were fired in her street the night before, but…”

“It could be a Master.”

A Master. A _human_ Master. This is going to be hell to deal with.

But they know about it now.

It’s a step in the right direction.


	6. Hamelin 1.5

Tylwyth Teg is a slippery adversary.

They know Tylwyth Teg always aims for little girls between five and seven. They know the way Tylwyth Teg kills, or, at least, how it appears on the autopsy. They know how long a child has after Tylwyth Teg takes her. They know Tylwyth Teg is a Master.

They don’t know much of anything else. 

Even _Tylwyth Teg_ is the name the PRT chose.

The problem is that they never manage to find the children while they’re still alive.

They don’t know how the next child to be taken is selected. Some of them knew each other, others have no connection Chloe or Armsmaster can find. It’s almost… Random.

And once the children go missing, well. Chloe is only one woman, and even if she could dedicate all her time to the sole search for the child, it would be hard enough to find a lone child in all of Brockton Bay if the city wasn’t in chaos, if she had more than two days before the child died.

But Chloe can’t dedicate all her time to looking for the children. She needs to find Tylwyth Teg, to talk with the parents and the police and the coroner, to fill out the paperwork about the case.

She needs to eat and sleep, as much as she wishes she didn’t.

Chloe does her best to find the children, and fails, again and again.

Chloe counts the names of the dead like the beads on a rosary that keeps getting longer.


	7. Hamelin 1.6

Sometimes, Chloe hates Brockton Bay.

She hates the powerlessness. The slow, inexorable worsening of things, the feeling that no matter what she does, she can’t make things better, merely forestall the worst.

(The transition to all-out war was almost a relief. At least, it gives them something to face head-on instead of the slow fraying of the rope holding the sword of Damocles.)

She hates the drugs, the human trafficking, the gang colors painted on high school walls.

She hates the sneer on Serena Larsen’s father when he sees her dark skin and her cornrows. She hates that she’s not surprised at his shaved skull, at the tattoos peeking under his sleeves. She hates that she’s going to ignore them.

(She’s not doing it for him. She’s doing it for the little girls she failed to save, for the little girl she probably won’t save, for the little girls who will come after.)

Chloe is tired of fighting the shadows of monsters. Tired of the multitude of the hydra, of the barely hidden corruption, of the unbeatable dragon.

She will take down Tylwyth Teg even if it kills her.

Chloe leaves the Larsen’s house, and listen to Armsmaster’s voice in her com as he offers suggestions and theories.

She wonders if he, too, hates Brockton Bay.


	8. Hamelin 1.7

In the end, Chloe breaks before the case.

She’s in the Rig with Armsmaster, pouring over what they have, what they _know_ , and she accidentally spills her cup of coffee down her front.

She’s fine. It’s cold enough it didn’t burn her, and none of it touched the documents spread out on the table.

She needs to change her shirt, and she doesn’t keep a change on the Rig so she needs to go home, and it’s pretty far so it’s going to take time, and Squealer blocked a street near her home by melting the asphalt with one of her car so it’s going to take even longer, and

Oh.

She’s crying.

_She can’t stop crying._

She keeps crying for a while, choked sobs that feel like she can’t breath, like her soul is stuck in her throat, and she’s wasting time, isn’t she ? She could be working, _should_ be working, but she’s crying instead, and the countdown keeps going for Ava King, and for the little girls who will come after her.

When she finally manages to calm down, Armsmaster hands her a glass of water.

“We have showers if you want to clean up,” he says, “and spare workout clothes. You can borrow one for today, if you want.”

She does want.

Armsmaster leads her to the shower room, and shows her where to find the towels and the spare clothes.

“Take your time,” he says as he leaves.

She does.

She needs to.

When she gets back to their work room, she can tell by his neatly trimmed beard that Armsmaster used the time she spent in the shower to refresh himself too.

He’s used a towel from the shower room to cover the list of names on the wall.


	9. Hamelin 1.8

Neither Chloe nor Armsmaster mention her little breakdown afterwards.

She’s glad for it. It’s… Well, it’s embarrassing. And they don’t have any time to waste.

She’s at the place Ava King was last seen, analyzing every inch of the room with various Tinkertech devices in the hope of finding… Something. Anything. 

Armsmaster sounded frustrated while he explained her how to use his creations through her, but she thinks it was directed at himself rather than her. Capes don’t tend to take well to being benched.

(Chloe isn’t a Cape, but she understands feeling powerless. She doesn’t hold it against him. Much.)

She’s not finding anything.

She expected that. Powers are bullshit. There was no reason for Tylwyth Teg to leave any kind of trace they could use to track them down.

Still. It was worth a try.

Powers are bullshit.

Armsmaster’s voice in her ear pulls her out of her reflections.

“Come to the Rig immediately.”

Something in his tone gives her pause.

“Did something happen?”

“Ava King has been found.”

He takes a deep breath, and she finally recognizes the foreign note in his voice. _Hope_. 

"Alive."


	10. Johnathan Mills

There are worse places to live in than Brockton Bay. Presumably.

Johnathan misses the farm. It was a nice farm. Growing up there was great. It’s been years, and he still doesn’t feel at home in the city.

(He understands why they moved. They were _unspeakably_ lucky the farm was so easy to miss. Todd and Katherine never told him what exactly happened to the rest of the town, but she still has nightmares about it.)

(Todd doesn’t. He killed himself six months later.)

(Fucking Slaughterhouse Nine.)

There are worse places to live in than Brockton Bay. Like the only farm left in a town lost to the slaughter.

Johnathan misses home.

(Home died with the town, and he can’t ever go back.)

There are worse places to live in than Brockton Bay. It doesn’t make it a good place to live in.

(It doesn’t make up for the Dragon of Kyushu, for the shots in the night, for the nazis, for the corruption.)

Johnathan finds a little girl in the streets. She can’t be older than six, and she’s all alone.

He takes her to the police station.

(He doesn’t know what else to do.)

It will have to be enough.


	11. Changeling 2.1

The room Ava King is kept in is cool.

Chloe remembers reading about the symptoms of dehydration, about the body trying to keep water by all means, about the risk of organ failure through overheating.

The room is cool because Ava King is dying, and nothing they try can stop it.

“Hello Ava,” says Chloe with what she hopes is a comforting smile.

The girl curls up in the bed, and the metal of her handcuff catches the light.

It feels wrong, a little girl handcuffed to an hospital bed, and Chloe wants to free her.

She doesn’t. The girl might still be mastered, and they don’t know what Tylwyth Teg can do through their thralls.

“I know it’s scary but I need you to talk to me, okay ? I’m trying to get you home, but I need you to help me, okay ? Here, I brought this for you,” says Chloe as she puts a knitted dragon plushie on the bed.

The plushie is Armsmaster’s idea. She’s not sure where it comes from, but it doesn’t matter. They need Ava to cooperate if they want to save her.

(They won’t. Chloe knows that. But they might save the next one.)

“’M not Ava,” says the girl. She has picked up the plushie, and keeps it pressed against her chest.

Chloe does her best not to react to the chill running down her back.

“Oh? Can you tell me your name, then?”

“Mia.”

‘Mia’ seems to speak and behave like a child, and more importantly, she’s _talking_ , so Chloe decides to keep the same approach.

“Be careful,” says Armsmaster in her com, and the familiarity of his voice in her ear feels comforting.

“That’s a very pretty name, Mia. Can you tell me your family name too, please?”

“Campbell.”

Mia Campbell. Chloe recognizes this name. She went missing, and they assumed her to be one of Tylwyth Teg’s first victims.

Her body wasn’t found.

“I want my Mommy,” says ‘Mia’. “I don’t like it here. It’s all dark.”

The room is white, bright in the fluorescent light of the neons, and this time, Chloe doesn’t manage to repress her shiver.


	12. Changeling 2.2

Ava King is dead.

Chloe knew they wouldn’t save her, but it still hits her hard.

She was _right there_.

(She wasn’t. Mia Campbell was. Maybe Tylwyth Teg. For all they know, Ava herself could have been long dead.)

(It still feel like she was.)

The phone rings, and Chloe answers machinally.

“Did you mean it?”

It takes her a few seconds to recognize the voice.

Lily Campbell.

Mia’s mother.

They saw her earlier, along with her boyfriend Keith Andrews, asked them for anything they could think of, anything about _Mia_. 

“Did I mean what?”

Lily Campbell hesitates.

“Nevermind. I… I need to talk to you about Mia.”

There’s something in her voice, something that sounds like sadness, or maybe guilt. Chloe ignores it.

They need _information_.

\---

Lily Campbell has hazel eyes and light brown hair, nervous hands and a face that could have been pretty if she didn’t look so tired. So _broken_.

(Her daughter is _missing_.)

“You said it could save kids if I told you about Mia,”she says, and Chloe feels something in the bottom of her stomach.

Maybe it’s hope. Maybe it’s dread.

“You also said that maybe you could save M… Save Mia, and you were wrong, but if, if _other_ kids are in danger, I can’t let you follow the wrong lead.”

She takes a deep breath.

“Mia’s dead,” says Lily Campbell. “I saw it. I was there when Keith killed her.”


	13. Changeling 2.3

_He didn’t mean to_ , said Lily Campbell.

Like it changes anything to the results.

 _I love Keith, but he wasn’t good with children. Too impatient_ , said Lily Campbell.

She had a kid. **Had**.

 _She was being difficult. It was an accident, you know. He didn’t mean to. He just… He pushed her, and she hit her head against the corner of the counter. It was an accident_ , said Lily Campbell.

She was six. He was a grown man.

 _He buried her. I don’t know where. I didn’t ask,_ said Lily Campbell.

She was her daughter.

 _I warned Keith. He had friends in the Empire, I think. He’s already long gone,_ said Lily Campbell.

He killed her.

 _I loved Mia. But I love Keith, too, and she’s dead and he’s alive_ , said Lily Campbell.

 _I want my Mommy_ , said Mia.

Chloe looks at the small, knitted dragon plushie on the table, the one the little girl, be it Ava or Mia, held as she died in her hospital bed, and throws it as hard as she can across the room.

It hits the wall next to the door as Armsmaster comes in, and he picks it up before sitting next to her.

(His leg is almost healed. Only a week or two before he’s returned to his normal functions, and then Chloe will be alone on the case.)

(She will miss him.)

“Do you think she’s right, and it isn’t Mia?” she asks.

“Maybe. Tylwyth Teg could be trying to mislead us. Or Lily Campbell could be mistaken, and Mia Campbell could have survived. In that case…”

His knuckles are white around the knitted dragon.

“Wherever she is, she’s scared and it’s dark.”


	14. Changeling 2.4

They’re still stuck.

They don’t know if Mia Campbell is dead or alive. They don’t know if _Tylwyth Teg_ is Mia, or if he’s pretending to be her for some twisted reason. They don’t know _why_ the children die.

And whatever the answer to those questions is, neither Chloe nor Armsmaster knows what to do next.

They’re stuck.

Chloe doesn’t like it, and Armsmaster doesn’t take it any better.

She wishes Keith Andrews hadn’t escaped.

(He deserves to _pay_. He deserves to spend the rest of his miserable life in _jail_.)

If they could find Mia Campbell’s grave, they would at least be _fixed_.

 _I don’t like it here. It’s all dark_ , said Mia Campbell.

They write the name of the dead on the wall of the room they work in, and the list keeps getting longer.


	15. Changeling 2.5

This time, it’s Chloe who makes a breakthrough.

Armsmaster isn’t there. He has other duties than the case, tech to build and maintain, paperwork to look over, a team to supervise. He was never able to focus only on the case as she did.

(She’s honestly not sure how he managed to spend so much time on it on top of his other obligations, but maybe it’s just a Cape thing. Maybe he doesn’t need to sleep.)

Chloe is thinking about Mia. Maybe she’s fixating on her, maybe it’s a dead end, or an attempt to misleading them, but she can’t get her out of her head.

 _I don’t like it here. It’s all dark_ , said the thing speaking through Ava’s mouth.

 _He buried her. I don’t know where. I didn’t ask_ , said Lily Campbell.

 _Wherever she is, she’s scared and it’s dark_ , said Armsmaster.

Since the beginning she, and Armsmaster after he joined, have been operating under the assumption that Tylwyth Teg _moved_. That they went to collect the children.

What if they were wrong?

If Tylwyth Teg is Mia… 

Keith buried her. She might still be in her grave.

(Capes don’t make a lot of sense.)

They might get a clue as to where she is using where the children were when they disappeared.

It might be a long shot, but it still something.

She needs to find Armsmaster. He’s better than she is when it comes to data.


	16. Changeling 2.6

The Little Light Cemetery. 

A graveyard. 

If Chloe guessed right, and if whatever Armsmaster did with the data worked, Mia Campbell should be buried somewhere in a graveyard

It’s bitterly appropriate. 

“Keith Andrews worked there,” Armsmaster says. “He was hired to clean the graves, weed the alleys, water the flowers. That kind of things. Him carrying something heavy inside wouldn’t have been suspicious, and he had the keys, so he would have been able to get in at night.”

Armsmaster doesn’t say that nobody goes in a graveyard to look for murder victims, but she hears it anyway.

It was an oversight she _won’t_ repeat.

“I’m going there,” she says.

“I’m coming with you,” he says.

She looks at him with surprise.

“My leg is almost fully healed. I’m not ready to fight Lung or Kaiser yet, but I should be able to search through a graveyard with little difficulty. And I don’t think you should risk facing a known human Master on your own, even if, _as far as we know_ , Tylwyth Teg never mastered an adult before.”

Right. That’s a good argument.

She waits in the hallway while he changes into his armor, and then they leave.

They have a corpse to find in Little Light Cemetery.


	17. Changeling 2.7

Instead of a motorcycle, they use a PRT truck to go to the cemetery.

A motorcycle would be impractical for two people, and would bring attention on Armsmaster. And if they do find a corpse, they need to be able to move it.

The Little Light Cemetery is in surprisingly good shape. It looks like Andrews took his job seriously.

“She’s there,” says Armsmaster. He’s standing over a grave.

“Patrick Spencer,” she reads. “He died a few days before Mia’s death. What makes you think she’s there?”

“I made a scanner to localize living people under rubble for search and rescues after fights with important amounts of property damages. I’m sure you can guess why.”

Chloe’s first thought is _Lung_ , and then, _Purity_. She doesn’t bother continuing the list and nods.

“It’s detecting someone inside this grave,” Armsmaster says. “Someone alive.”

Well. That was fast.

“Let’s desecrate a grave, then,” she says.

It’s disconcertingly easy. It rained the earlier that day, so the ground is wet and soft, and Armsmaster brought shovels.

Patrick Spencer’s corpse, or at least, Chloe assumes it’s him, is rotting outside his coffin, and they move him aside with as much respect as they can.

Inside the coffin, there’s a little girl, and Chloe recognizes the light brown hair and the dark brown eyes.

It’s Mia Campbell, and she doesn’t move, or blink, but Chloe can feel in her guts that Armsmaster’s scanner didn’t lead them astray.

She’s alive.


	18. Changeling 2.8

She’s is still kneeling over Mia when the girl enters the graveyard.

She’s small, and she looks like she’s six or seven, and Chloe recognizes the last girl to go missing. 

Chloe doesn’t move, but she sees, from the corner of her eyes, that Armsmaster traded his shovel for his halberd.

“Hello Mia,” he says.

The girl mutters a greeting through the thumb in her mouth.

“I know you're scared,” he continues, “but it’s over now. We found you.”

The girl takes a step back.

“You've been very brave,” he continues, his voice soft, and Chloe remembers that comforting small, scared children his a part of his job. “You’re safe now. It’s all going to be all right.”

He hesitates, and slowly extands a hand toward Mia as she stands in Kia’s body.

“I brought you Wyrm. Claire told me you liked her when you talked. You remember Claire?”

They’re not supposed to use real names when Masters are involved. Claire is how Chloe introduced herself to Ava King. To Mia.

She didn’t notice that Armsmaster was bringing the dragon plushie.

Mia takes a few steps toward them, then stops. She’s swaying a bit, and the symptoms of dehydration runs through Chloe’s mind.

Accelerated heartbeat. Fainting. Overheating due to lack of sweat. The night is cool, so it won’t kill her, but kidney failure probably will.

Mia has had Kia Simmons for almost three days. They’re running out of time.

Mia takes the plushie and presses it against her chest, and Armsmaster starts talking again. 

“You’ve been very brave, but now, I need you to go back to your body, okay? I need you to let Kia go, okay?”

“No,” says Mia.

Armsmaster starts to sound desesperate

“Mia, please, it’s important. It’s all going to be all right, but _I need you to let Kia go_.”

“But then I will be all alone again,” says Mia in a little voice.

Armsmaster keeps pleading, and Mia keeps refusing, and her body lies between them, unblinking.

Kia is dying.

They were _so close_.

They were _so fucking close_.

And now it’s all falling apart.


	19. Derrek Simmons

As the PRT agent stands before him, Derrek is so relieved he could kiss her.

She brought Kia back. She brought his little girl back.

All news are not good.

Derrek has to listen to Agent Solomon as she tells him about trigger events, as she sits him down and explains to him that his little girl has been _traumatized_ , that she has powers now, that she’s a cape, that they’re all going to have to live with it and that it won’t be easy.

Derrek has to listen to the doctors as they tell him it’s too early to tell whether Kia’s kidneys suffered permanent damages.

They’re going to need to move to another city. Kia is _not_ going to be a cape in _Brockton Bay_.

All news are not good.

But Kia was _missing_ , she’s _six_ , and _black_ , and she was _missing_ in _Brockton Bay_ , and now she’s back, and the cape who took her is dead.

Derrek has his little girl back, and for tonight at least, it’s enough.

They’ll deal with the rest one step at a time.


	20. Colin Wallis

Colin isn’t religious.

He doesn’t know if there’s a God, or several, or none. He doesn’t know, and doesn’t care, because he has far too much to do to think about it, has no time for theology. He doesn’t feel like it matters, not really, doesn’t think it really changes anything.

Colin isn’t religious. But if there is a Hell, then he will _burn_.

She was _six_. Mia Campbell was _six_ , and he, he…

She was only a _little girl_.

The coldly logical part of his mind tells him he made the right choice. It was Kia or Mia, and no matter her age and fear, Mia was the culprit and Kia the victim. Mia had killed, and might have killed again. He tried for a pacific resolution for as long as he could. He tried to save both as long as was reasonable. 

He _failed_. He tried so hard, and he failed anyway. 

She was only _six_. She was only six, and they were both victims.

For the first time in years, Colin isn’t sure he can keep going.

If there’s a Hell, then he will burn in the fire he started. 

\---

When Chloe comes inside the room, Colin doesn’t bother putting his mask back on.

“Kia Simmons was reunited with his daughter,” she says. “It’s over.”

She looks tired.

She was there. He saw the realization in her eyes in the split second before he…

She knew. She knew he was going to kill Mia, and she did nothing to stop him.

“You okay, Armsmaster?” she asks.

“Colin,” he says so he doesn’t have to answer.

Chloe sits beside him and hands him a paper cup full of coffee before raising hers like for a toast.

“To Kia Simmons,” she says, “who survived. May she live long, and be happy. And to Derrek Simmons, who got his daughter back.”

Kia survived, didn’t she? That’s not a lot, but that’s one child who didn’t die, one family that won’t be torn apart. That’s _something_.

“To the Simmons,” says Colin, and he raises his cup too.

If there’s a Hell, then he will burn. They both will.

But they’re not quite there yet.


	21. Informational: About Mia's powers

Mia's powers are voluntarily kept somewhat vague in-story because none of the characters, Mia included, actually understand how they work. 

Mia triggered in her grave.

Mia's power is the ability to project her consciousness in the closest girl in her age-bracket (5-7 in-story, as Mia is 6). She cannot master more than one person at a time, or chose who she masters. Both Mia and the mastered girl are conscious of what happens in both their bodies. However, the two of them can't communicate.

If Mia's body is lacking something necessary to her survival, it will be drawn from the mastered bodies, which is why the girls kept dying of thirst: once digested, the water went to Mia rather than them.

Mia cannot talk or move her body in any way. This is not a result of her powers, but of the brain damage inflicted by Keith prior to her trigger event.


End file.
